NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Spending too much time in front
of a television, computer or other devices with screens may
signal problems in a child's family and personal wellbeing,
according to a new study.

Based on data for more than 3600 children in eight European
countries, researchers found that family functioning and
emotional wellbeing were especially linked to changes in the
amount of time kids spent in front of screens.

The study's lead author said they can't say what factors may
be behind the associations. "We really need to do a little bit
more digging in this area before we can answer some of the basic
questions," Trina Hinkley told Reuters Health.

Hinkley is a research fellow at the Centre for Physical
Activity and Nutrition Research at Deakin University in
Melbourne.

Several recent studies have highlighted the possible
negative effects of kids spending too much time watching
televisions, playing video games and working on computers.

Specifically, screen time has been linked to differences
among children in weight and sleep quality (see Reuters Health
stories of March 17, 2014 here: http://reut.rs/1ifw3F2 and March
12, 2014 here: http://reut.rs/1ifw5wz.)

Late last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)
also urged parents to keep tabs on their children's media use
and limit screen time to no more than one to two hours of high
quality programming (see Reuters Health story of October 28,
2014 here: http://reut.rs/1f0lfYE.)

For the new study, researchers from the Identification and
Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in
Children and Infants Consortium analyzed data on kids who were
between two and six years of age when they entered the study
between September 2007 and June 2008.

At that time, the parents completed questionnaires about
their children's media use and wellbeing - including the child's
emotional and peer problems, self-esteem and family and social
functioning. Parents answered another questionnaire two years
later.

Overall, the researchers found that for social and
peer-related measures, screen time had no effect. But for each
additional hour or so of screen time parents reported, a child's
risk of emotional and family problems rose up to two-fold.

"We found that family functioning and emotional problems did
seem to have some association with electronic media, but the
others didn't show any association at all," Hinkley said.

Linda Pagani, who was not involved in the new study but has
researched screen time among children, cautioned that there may
be other explanations behind some of the results.

"It could be that families who used screen time more were
families who weren't functioning that well to begin with," she
said.

Pagani is psychologist and senior researcher at
Saint-Justine's Hospital Research Center at the University of
Montreal in Canada.

She also cautioned that the results are based on the
parents' reports, which are subject to inaccuracies.

Despite the study's limitations, however, Pagani said there
are several drawbacks to letting children have a lot of screen
time, including sleep disturbances and lost face-to-face
communication time.

"My message is, the brain is very dependent on human social
interaction and this excessive screen time on a computer or
television may be at the detriment of time for other people,"
she said.

She also endorsed the the two-hour rule set by the AAP, but
cautioned that screen time shouldn't be right before bed.

"As a clinician, as a parent and a psychologist, use that
two-hour rule, but make sure those two hours don't occur right
before bed, because they're losing precious sleep time," she
said.